Sharp Calming Breaths
by glassfacet
Summary: It's sixth year, and utter madness is coming to Hogwarts. Remus and Sirius are joining the staff as co-DADA teachers. The Marauder class is coming up from the past from Halloween til Christmas. Ron and Hermione are falling in love - but not with each other. And Draco makes Harry a very unusual offer. Same universe as Toujours Pur. Warning: my headcanon, slash, het, lil bit crack.


Chapter One - The Talk

_In which Harry spends some quality time with Sirius and Remus and receives some fairly late but much appreciated parenting, to the embarrassment of all involved._

Number twelve, Grimmauld Place was a reasonably unpleasant place to either visit or live. It was a house determined to stifle sound and absorb light, and be generally foreboding. Or at least, it was that way at the beginning of June in 1996. By the end of July, the dark panelling and wallpaper was gone. Sirius and Remus decided that enough was enough and removed the wall that old Mrs Black's portrait was on. They rebuilt the wall and barricaded the painting in Regulus' bedroom, which they then sealed shut.

Harry moved in with his unusual extended family ten days into summer break. Even though he wasn't legally allowed to do magic outside of school, Remus and Sirius let him get away with some things. Like when they had to clean a bedroom, Remus insisted that Harry learn basic housekeeping spells and practice them. Sirius taught him the proper way to evict nests of Doxies, from brewing the right potion for bites to spells to keep them immobile, other than Stunning spells, that were still humane.

Tonks, who lived there part time, helped with removing truly dangerous things. If Sirius wasn't sure if something was legal, Tonks would be asked to get it out of the house and into a secure facility. Harry learned quite a bit about the finer points of magical law before his sixteenth birthday, courtesy of the adults at number twelve. Particularly the laws regarding werewolf rights, or as Sirius pointed out, lack thereof.

"Kingsley is coming by tomorrow to make sure that my transforming space is up to Ministry standards," Remus informed them over breakfast. "I want you two out of the house by nine. Go grocery shopping or something."

"Kingsley's a decent sort though," said Harry.

**"**But the official Ministry forms are not," said Remus. "And the standard for the confining room is significantly higher, and correspondingly uncomfortable, if there is someone underage living in the house. Both of you will go."

"What are the forms about?" asked Sirius, putting down the slice of toast he'd been working on. "You've never told me."

"Very personal questions," said Remus. "Am I single? Am I sexually active? Am I employed? Does my employer know I'm a werewolf? How many times a week to I eat meat? Do I enjoy watching violent movies? Things like that. Very annoying."

"Fine, fine, we'll go," said Sirius with a mischievous glint in his eye. "But let us help you practice for the interview. We ask you, you ask us. It'll be fun."

"Sounds good to me," said Harry. "Please, Remus?"

Remus sighed. "Fine, fine. Ask whatever, I suppose."

"Alright," said Sirius, putting on a pseudo-serious face. "Mr Lupin, are you currently employed?"

"Why yes, I am," said Remus, equally mock-serious. "I'm a spy for an underground Voldemort resistance group. I gather information about his movements from other werewolves."

"So your employer is aware of your condition?" asked Harry, catching on to the game.

"Of course," said Remus. "It was my greatest credential."

"What is your favourite type of meat?" asked Sirius.

"I'm very fond of rat," said Remus. "But chicken is nice too." Both Harry and Sirius laughed at that, and Remus cracked a smile. "I'm afraid that's becoming a running in-joke."

"And why shouldn't it?" said Sirius. "I myself am partial to rat. Eating venison, on the other hand, makes me gag. It's too weird."

"What about you, Harry?" said Remus. "Any favourite foods?"

"I like roasted chicken," said Harry. "And treacle tart. I'm not really picky, though."

"So may I test out different recipes on you?" asked Remus, perking up. "Sirius can't cook at all and has been terrified of my new concoctions since the exploding tiramisu. Which _wasn't_ my fault, precisely."

"How did you get tiramisu to explode?" asked Harry. "And what is tiramisu?"

"You've never had tiramisu?" said Sirius incredulously. "Remus, what's on next week's menu?"

"I haven't planned it yet," said Remus. "But I can add an Italian night. We'll do make your own pizzas and tiramisu."

"Excellent," said Sirius. "It's been ages since I've had your tiramisu."

"Back to questions," said Remus firmly. "Because I know that Sirius is dying to know and won't ask, are you seeing anyone, Harry?"

"No," said Harry. "I mean, I went to the Yule Ball with Parvati. That went badly. And the one date I had with Cho was an unmitigated disaster."

"What happened?" asked Sirius.

"She wanted to talk about Cedric," said Harry, "in Madam Puddiffoot's tea shop. And I went and mentioned meeting Hermione later without decent context or excuse. Very awkward."

"I think we can call that a disaster," said Remus, shaking his head. "I've heard of worse, but not by much."

"Like the time Lily went out with what's-his-face from Ravenclaw?" said Sirius.

"Much like," said Remus. To Harry he added, "Your mum decided to go out with Westley Biggins in fifth year. James got himself all worked up about it, and somehow convinced us to sabotage them. Not that Biggins needed our help, or anything."

"He spent the whole date treating Lily like she was stupid," said Sirius. "Which your mum was less than impressed by, as you can imagine. I think the final straw came after we slipped a drop of Veritaserum into his butterbeer and he basically admitted to being a pig."

"Lily even thanked us for running interference," said Remus. "Later, of course, when she wasn't quite so angry at us for wrecking her date."

"You and Mum were friends, right?" said Harry.

"We were," said Remus. "She couldn't stand James and Sirius, separately or together, and Peter was a bit frightened of her, but we found that we had quite a bit in common. Both of us were fond of old Muggle fiction."

"You'd argue about it for hours," sighed Sirius. "James never could follow your conversations about the Brontes and Tolstoy."

"You only started reading War and Peace after your liver and kidneys were somehow vanished," said Remus dryly, "and you needed something to do while they regrew."

"And what a wonderful experience it was," said Sirius.

"How did you lose your internal organs?" asked Harry.

"I got into a rather heated argument with Bellatrix," said Sirius. "In due fairness, she was on the other side of the ward, attempting to regrow a good portion of her skeletal system. It was a nasty business."

"I'll bet," said Harry. "Can I ask you something really personal?"

"Of course," said Remus, settling into teacher mode. "There's a lot you don't know about us. It's only natural to ask."

"Are either of you seeing someone?" asked Harry tentatively. Sirius and Remus exchanged looks.

"Yes," said Sirius quietly, taking Remus' hand.

"And have been for a while," said Remus. Both of them watched Harry warily, waiting for the reaction.

"Brilliant," said Harry, blinking. "Erm, how long is a while?"

"Since, what, our fourth year?" said Sirius. Remus nodded. "Well something like that. Not exactly stable, mostly because I'm an idiot."

"Did my parents know?" asked Harry.

"They did, actually," said Remus. "James found out early in fifth year, just after they'd gotten the Animagus transformations down pat. Apparently, I wouldn't stop biting Padfoot's face."

"Which roughly translates to 'I love you' in wolf speak," said Sirius. "James and I had poured over wolf behaviour books for hours, trying to figure out how to introduce our animal selves to Moony. There was no way he forgot."

"And Lily figured it out the old fashioned way," said Remus, shaking his head. "Sirius just had to come up with an elaborate apology scheme, and Lily, poor dear, walked in on it. Oddly wasn't phased by who, just by what."

"But if Peter knew, why didn't he mention it to anyone?" asked Harry. "I mean, he could have said something in the Shrieking Shack. Or to Voldemort. So why didn't he?"

"Probably because he wasn't sure where we stood with each other," said Sirius. "Volatile relationship that we had in our teens and twenties, people rarely knew what was going on with us. So when Lily and James died, we were on the outs in a pretty extreme way."

"And because we'd just seen each other again, but were being friendly," said Remus, "Peter was stuck between the whole 'just-friends' and 'together' options." He paused and looked over Harry's expression worriedly. "Are you okay with everything?"

"I think so," said Harry, mulling over everything they'd shared. "I mean, no one ever mentioned it to me at all before. Like, at all. About anything."

"Um, anything?" asked Remus tentatively. "Like no one mentioned _us_ anything? Or about ah, romantic attachments and intimacy anything?"

"Eer, both, really," muttered Harry, rather embarrassed.

"Oh dear," said Remus. "Right. Because you would have been pulled out of Muggle schools before the Talk. And, um, the Dursleys didn't…? Right, of course not. Sirius, this is your job."

"I'm lost, Moony," said Sirius. "What's my job?"

"Talking through the Talk," said Remus. "And answering questions that come from it."

"Wait, like the Talk, the Talk?" said Sirius. "But Remus - "

"I know the basics," said Harry, jumping in to try to save his godfather some embarrassment. "Mrs Weasley got us Muggle info pamphlets in second year. And I looked up the things I had questions about in the library."

"Thank God for Molly Weasley," sighed Sirius. "And libraries."

"You still have to do a Q and A, Sirius," said Remus firmly. "Consider it a rehashing of every gave of Truth or Dare you've ever played. I have to go and make sure the confining room is as secure as it should be."

"Damnit," sighed Sirius as Remus practically flew out of the kitchen. "He always has the best excuses. Even in school. Like the time we wanted to pin raw meat all over the potions classroom at the waxing gibbous."

"What happened?" asked Harry.

"It was one of Peter's better ideas," said Sirius. "But we had to postpone it until Remus wouldn't feel compelled to eat all of it. At which point we learned that the snobbish rich can't tell the difference between common raw meat and well prepared appetizers. A good chunk of our year wound up with food poisoning, and we didn't get into trouble for it."

"Lucky," said Harry. "Snape would never let me get away with something like that."

"To be fair, Lily gave us a good dressing down," said Sirius. "Mostly about wasting food. And then she made us each eat two full trifle bowls of everything on the table at dinner that night. And thus I learned to appreciate growing up in my family. Their politics suck, but they always made sure that everybody had more than enough to eat."

"I know about sucky extended families," said Harry. "You've met the Dursleys, right?"

"Not since your parents got engaged," admitted Sirius. "I found that their viewpoint on the world was almost as narrow as my mum's. Except that Mum, for all her faults, never objected to Regulus or me bringing boys home."

"Are things that different in the wizarding world?" asked Harry.

"Fairly," said Sirius thoughtfully. "I mean, it's a strange situation, really. On the one hand, old pureblood families have their anti-Muggle prejudice, but no one cares who you fall in love with, so long as one of you is competent with either spell work or potions. On the other hand, the families that have welcomed Muggles and their ideas care. They worry about their kids being gay. It's a bit hard to sort out, actually."

"How did my parents feel?" asked Harry.

"I'll show you the book of trees at some point," said Sirius. "James' great grandfather married another man. It was a bit scandalous at the time, as your great great grandfather had money but nowhere to live, and his husband had an ancient house but no money. But apparently, they were happy together. My maternal grandmother was their daughter. Mum hated her. But yeah, James wasn't one to care about either, really. Lily found it strange at first, I think, but she chose this as her world so the customs came with it."

"That doesn't really give me an answer," said Harry. He quickly added, "Sorry."

Sirius pushed his hair roughly back. "It's fine, I'm just not doing this well. Your dad grew up accepting lots of things, like people of different backgrounds and sexualities, and not accepting things, like the Dark Arts. I can say that for sure because we talked about it, the lot of us in our dorms. But I'm not sure about how Lily felt. I'd say, read her diaries, but they went missing."

"So she was probably okay with it," said Harry. "Hey, Sirius? How did you know that you loved Remus?"

"Hmm," said Sirius. "We used to take turns sneaking Remus chocolate when he was in the hospital wing. So one time when it was my turn, I snuck in and found him sound asleep. I knew that Madam Pomfrey had done a good job, but he looked so frail. So, being the stupid fourteen year old I was, I decided to curl up next to him to keep him warm. James gave us a picture of it when we graduated. But when I woke up, I knew that I was in the right place."

"And I've been attempting to housetrain him ever since," said Remus from the doorway. "The room's as good as it's going to be, between what I've done to it, what you've done to it and what the Order Aurors have done to it. By the way, I knew the first night in the dormitory. I'd been waiting for someone who smelled like Sirius ever since I'd been bitten."

"That's sappy," said Harry.

"It is," agreed Remus. "But it does certainly help. I'm guessing you haven't done the awkward bits, have you?"

"Nope," said Sirius. "We thought we'd have all day. I'd be happier if you'd help."

"Fine, fine," sighed Remus. "Ask away, Harry. Neither of us bite in human form. Much."

"Um," said Harry, his face an unusual shade of pink. "I did have a few questions…"


End file.
